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A Nintendo handheld without a Pokemon title is like Ash without Pikachu, as the two have been inseparable for years, resulting in millions upon millions of sales. Pokemon titles are the lifeblood of Nintendo's portable systems, and it was obviously only going to be a matter of time before one was announced for the 3DS.

And now that's finally come to pass. Nintendo President Saturo Iwata gave a short presentation on Nintendo Direct detailing the next two games in the series, Pokemon X and Pokemon Y. It marks the first time the games have ditched the color theme, and also the first time the games have truly been in three dimensions. I expect we may see a Pokemon Z at some pointing, rounding out the three axes.

There's a short debut trailer below, and it's something that will likely get many fans excited, myself included. No, we're still leagues away from a console Pokemon game that has us roaming Skyrim-esque wilds in search of monsters, but this is a big step up over past games, and shows that they're at least trying to move the game forward in meaningful ways.

The two titles will release simultaneously worldwide sometime this year, rather than Japan getting an early release as always tends to happen. The pair of games will now be the sixth generation of Pokemon titles, though no word on exactly how many new monsters are being added to the ever growing pile.

Simply put, it looks great, and it's probably a safe bet that the games will end up being the best-selling titles for the system after release. Again, it seems obvious that a further evolution of the series would be a title for the WiiU, you know, the system where you're literally holding a Pokedex, but if Nintendo hasn't figured out that fans want an open world console Pokemon game by now, perhaps they never will.